Adam Fenech is the Director of the University of PEI's Climate Change Lab and he discusses the implications of climate change on agriculture in this presentation. He talks about the changes to temperature and precipitation over the last 125 years in the Banff, Alberta area.
Fenech explains the temperature has been going up in Banff, when looking at records from 1888 to 2012. A climate normal is a thirty year timeline of climate information. Climate change is looked at in these blocks of time, and this most recent climate normal is the warmest one in the last 110 years.
When evaluating the highest, mean, and lowest temperature from 1888 to 2012 in Banff, Alberta, all have gone up. These results are comparable to what is happening across Canada. Regarding seasonal precipitation from 1894 to 2013 in Banff, Alberta, it is getting drier in every season except spring.
When trying to predict future changes in temperature and precipitation, the largest difficulty is that no one knows what greenhouse gasses are going to be like in 50 or 70 years. This depends on how many people are on the planet, the type of energy we are using, and the type of economy we have. Based on middle of the line best estimates, Fenech expects to see temperatures will go up 2 degrees and there will be a 3-4 percent increase in precipitation. It is anticipated that the number of frost free days will increase, and growing season is expected to increase by 19 percent by the 2050s.
This presentation was a part of the Alberta Institute of Agrologists Tenth Annual Banff Conference in April 2014.
